What Theatre’s All About
Tom Noonan, the actor/director who wrote the screenplay and both filmed and starred in its 1994 screen incarnation, structured the story in an admirably simple form: as a one-act driven purely by dialogue and character. But even though it runs just a bit over an hour, there is a distinct progression as the characters’ layers are peeled back to expose the raw wounds beneath. Courtney Rackley, as Jackie, and Michael Novick, as Michael (the role Tom Noonan played in the film), offer well-tuned performances that live up to the popular notion that we each wear masks that reveal or conceal all or part of our inner selves. It’s a pop psychology metaphor, of course, but it applies well. Jackie and Michael each embody the consequences of what existentialists would refer to as “bad faith,” and it is the subsequent realization of this that leads to a poignant, open-ended ending.
What Happened Was…does have its occasional blemish, as in a hilariously macabre fairy tale read by Jackie to Michael that goes on a bit too long. One might even go so far as to wonder whether the tale is a bit out of place and a bit too glib to serve even an allegorical function. But that’s a rare point of contention for a play best experienced rather than dryly analyzed on paper. For a bit over an hour, the audience gets to be flies on the wall as two co-workers in a legal firm explore the possibility of a relationship outside of work. With a production that can’t be faulted, and a well-written, alternately comic and tragic script touching on the universal themes of the human condition, finding out what happened in What Happened Was… is what going to the theatre is all about.
What Happened Was…by Tom Noonan. Directed by Stephen Van Dorn. Starring Courtney Rackley and Michael Novick. Playing on Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm from Nov 3rd to Nov 18 at the Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre,5636 Melrose Avenue. Tickets are $15. Reservations required: 310/358-9901 www.stephaniefeurystudio.com
